Fender Venus!

Here's a great picture I took of my brother-out-law Peter playing my Fender Venus electric guitar, my son Sam playing a pumpkin shaker, a bone shaker and some bells, and my son Arthur playing electronic drums, back in June of 2000. As you can see we have a cool living room where most everything is either red or black. :-)

After many years of acoustic guitars, my first electric guitar was a $60-ish "refurbished" Synsonics Stratocaster copy with a built-in speaker. It was cute and fun but definitely not a well-made guitar. I banished it to the garage during a period of guitar inactivity, and when I got it out again the internal speaker was spitting out more static than music. I decided to replace it with a good electric guitar, but which one? -- there were so many kinds, all appealing in their own ways.

Then I saw the Fender Venus (also known as the Fender Squier Venus and the Fender Vista Venus), and knew that was the one for me. A beautiful simple well-made guitar that sounded great and felt perfect. I loved the somewhat harp-shaped (or pregnant-shaped :-)) body that looked kind of like a cross between a Stratocaster and a Rickenbacker, the feel of the neck, that it had both single-coil and humbucking pickups, and that it was designed by a female rocker. Check out Courtney Love's explanation of her design for the Venus in this excerpt from Guitar World Magazine's January 1999 article HOLE TONES: Secrets Of Celebrity Skin's Smooth Sound:

The body shape was based in part on Rickenbacker solidbodies and Mercury guitars - an obscure American brand. The Venus models that Love plays have just one pickup - a single-coil mounted on a slant in the neck position. But production models add a bridge humbucker. "I wanted a guitar that sounded really warm and pop, but which required just one box to go dirty," says Love. "And something that could also be your first band guitar. I didn't want it all teched out. I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch. Because I think that cultural revolutions are in the hands of the guitar players."

But the Venus had already been discontinued, so where was I going to get one? A local store had a sunburst model in stock for a lot of money, but I wanted a black one, so I started looking around the net. After a while I found (I think it was via a message in one of the Usenet forsale groups, but I seem not to have saved all my correspondence about it) a guy who used to have a guitar store who still had some new Venuses for sale including one black one. I bought it from him for a good price, on December 11 of 1998 UPS delivered it to my house, and it's been my favorite guitar ever since.

In the living room I use it with a Fender Blues Junior amp (it's a nice basic little tube amp -- see if you can find it in the picture at the top of this page -- also, Spinal Tap fans should take note that it goes to twelve!), but most of the time I actually just play it acoustically in my "home office", sitting in front of my computer. This is because I usually practice in the early morning when everyone else in the house is asleep, ala play a little, read a little email, play a little, read a little news, etc. Or sometimes I play it through my computer speakers (I have a guitar cord plugged into my soundcard's microphone port) to play along with MP3s or CDs. And for that matter I just got a "LightSnake" guitar-to-USB cable for it, though I'm not really sure yet what programs would be good to use with it.

I also have a "Beatnik Burgundy" (!) Danelectro HoneyTone mini-amp (of the battery-powered belt-clip variety), but it mainly gets used with the Backpacker on trips, or my iPod in the Cabrillo music lab.

I have a padded Levy's Leathers "hot chili pepper" guitar strap on my Venus, that is very solid and comfortable and looks good too.

First, some general Venus links

The Venus was part of Fender's "Vista" series of affordable, high-quality guitars made at Fender's now-closed Japanese facility -- take a look at Fender's January 1997 press release introducing the Vista series.

A reader asked about wiring diagrams for the Venus -- when I wrote to Fender about this I got a letter back saying that they didn't have the wiring diagrams, but they did send me faxes of the parts lists for the Venus and Venus XII.

Another reader asked about what kind of space was available under the pickguard for modifications -- while I haven't done anything like that myself, I will note that Harmony Central reviewer "Darragh" says,

the 'swimming pool' routing doesn't allow you to play without a pickguard in the manner of a tele or a jazz bass, but it does give you the huge advantage of an almost infinite scope for modifications, without needing to re-route the body. By only cutting the pickguard you can switch one or both of the pickups to something completely different, or even add a new pickup, you can extra pots and you even have the space to add active electronics

Facebook users can join the "I Love My Fender Venus" Facebook group. A second "new style Facebook group" version of it has also been created as a workaround for some admin/password problem with the original group -- interested people are asked to join the new group, but right now most of the content is still on the original group.

Matt Kemp's old Vista Series E-zine site seems to have been reborn as a message board. Unfortunately it's been hit pretty hard by offensive spammers, but you can still (once you scroll down past the offensive spam) read and post Venus info and questions in the Venus Owners forum.

"TaylorPlayer" just bought a Venus and is enjoying it, and created a "Venus God of Love that You Are" forum where you can see some Venus discussion including some videos of Courtney Love playing both a Venus predecessor and a neck-pickup-only Venus.

Courtney's most well known Venus, the baby blue one with the Black pickguard was indeed a Fender custom shop one off. It differed from the Squier version by having a set neck.

But she also used a black Squier Venus (with a replaced Fender branded neck, because she likes to toss her guitars around a lot the Squier neck got damaged) a white Squier Venus, a sunburst Twelve string Venus and (as also used in the video for "Celebrity skin") a Pink Venus which was rather crudely modified with purple lipstick having the word "Dork" written on the upper part of its body.

BTW, if you wound up on this page because you're a Courtney Love fan, check out her Salon article "Courtney Love does the math", billed as "The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs."

BTW again, I saw Courtney Love in concert here in Santa Cruz on October 28, 2004, but darnitall, she didn't play guitar at all during the show, only sang.

Natalia Manzocco of Toronto's The Cheap Speakers. You can see pictures of Natalia playing her Venus here and here -- she says "All my guitar-nerd dude friends
absolutely love it because it's so easy to play."

Ok, so this is really stretching it, but still ... Luna Guitars' "Diana" series of acoustic/electic guitars and basses are available in "Venus Pink", and Rivera makes Venus 3, Venus 6 112, and Venus 6 212 amps.